


Law and Order SVU S19 Finale: Scars

by you_cannot_define_me



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Law and Order - Freeform, Look I Wrote More Angst, Mama Bear Benson, Not a ship, Olivia Benson is Empathy Personified, Peter Stone Needs A Hug, S19: finale, canon-fic, law and order svu, what a surprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 05:17:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14742674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/you_cannot_define_me/pseuds/you_cannot_define_me
Summary: A short canon-fic of the final scene of Season 19, between Olivia and Peter.





	Law and Order SVU S19 Finale: Scars

**Author's Note:**

> This episode killed me. Let me kill you. Enjoy!

She moved to leave. Oh, she wanted to help him. Desperately. Just as she wanted to help everyone; there was so much pain in the world, and she was seeing it pour out day after day after day, and she _had_ to do something about it. She had to help it heal.

But there are some wounds, she had found, that she couldn't repair. They would always be there, because her words weren't the ones they needed to hear. She wasn't the right person for the job.

And as Peter sat, beer in front of him, head in his hands and shoulders slumped, Olivia wanted to help him with everything in her. But she didn't think she could. So, she stuttered, voice choked, "Peter, I'm--I'm so sorry..." and hesitated, but turned away.

"I was nine," Peter said, startling her slightly. She turned back. "I was playing with my buddies on the playground. And Pam showed up, with a bloody lip." His voice broke as he said his sister's name.

"She said Billy Collier had pushed her down the stairs." He took a breath, biting his lip. "I beat the living hell out of him."

Olivia sat down on the couch, unsure if he truly wanted her there, but extending her battered heart to his all the same.

"Peter," Olivia said, her voice soft as it had been so many times before. Touching wounds must be a delicate thing. "You have to know..." She put her hand on his back and looked at his downcast eyes, filled with the intense pain that she knew all too well herself. Then she said, "There was nothing you could have done. ... _Nothing._ "

Peter lifted his eyes to hers, and seeing such compassion in them, he let down the last of his walls.

"The last thing...Pam said...was... _Peter_...!"

He collapsed, crying, into Olivia's arms, aching for the embrace of a sister whom he would never hold again.

And Olivia held him, and she tried to comfort him. But she knew she could not. The most she could do was be there as he began the agonizingly long process of healing, and of regrowing the heart that had been ripped out of him.

But there would always be scars. Olivia was deeply familiar with them. And that is why, as she held her sobbing friend, a part of her chest throbbed, where her own scars were.

As they sat there, Olivia wondered if there was anything she could have done. Just like she knew Peter did, and always would, despite what she told him. And she realized that she knew what his nightmares would be, and what his biggest regret had become, and what word he would never be able to hear the same way again. She realized he trusted her.

And her heart told her it was because he knew just how deeply she understood. Olivia thought to herself, as she cried silent tears for Peter, who was breaking in her arms, that perhaps, after all, she was the person who could help him heal. Slowly, and never completely, but perhaps she could help seal the open wound so that it could become a scar.

That night, for perhaps the first time, Olivia felt the smallest bit of thankfulness that she had gone through what she had.

Peter needed her, and it was her he needed because it was her who had scars that went just as deep.

Olivia cried for broken hearts that night. And Peter broke, Peter cried for one that had stopped beating.


End file.
